The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Christmas morning is a time for family togetherness, enjoying the delighted faces of children, and surprising loved ones with thoughtful gifts. Unfortunately, wrapping gifts and putting them under the tree until the recipient opens the box means risking a retail hazard: boxes of expensive electronics that contain notepads, bricks, picture frames, or mirrors. This is disturbingly common, and happened to a family in Massachusetts this Christmas.

Imagine the scene: their 9-year-old son had only asked for a PS4 for Christmas, and his parents bought him one that included an Uncharted bundle at Target. After they took some pictures of the delighted boy, he opened the box and found… a wooden block cut precisely to fit the PS4 box, and what TV station WFXT(warning: auto-play video at that link) describes as a “profane message” written on the block with a black marker. Nice.

If you aren’t familiar with the box of crap scam, here’s how it works: a not-very-nice person buys an electronics item, like a PS4 or an iPad, then removes the actual gadget and replaces it with something that weighs about the same. This could be bathroom tiles, rocks, or a piece of wood, as happened here.

The parents discussed their problem with a manager, and Target gave them a different PS4 bundle, a copy of Uncharted, and a $100 gift card for their trouble. It doesn’t make up for not being able to be able to play with his gift on Christmas morning, but that does help.

The family in Massachusetts used a tactic that we didn’t think of back in 2008 when we put together a guide for consumers who find themselves in this situation: they returned the wooden block with a TV news crew standing by. It’s not clear whether the crew was already there to do a story about after-Christmas returns or whether the family had called the local TV station, but it probably didn’t hurt their case. Stores often suddenly believe victims once a local media outlet becomes involved in the situation.

One way to avoid this is to open the box before you leave the store and make sure that the right item is in there. Will the gift recipient be happy to receive an already-opened PlayStation? Maybe not, but it’s an awful lot better than opening a box full of wood. For a game console, you can also do some of the basic setup work of connecting it to your home WiFi network and downloading upgrades, saving the recipient valuable play time when they open it.